”i dunno if its just my cheap computer but i keep flying past the message i want to see. its so long this thread that my computer can't cope with it.”

Al, if you click on the number showing the total number of posts instead of clicking on the thread title, the thread will open in ‘pages’. If you then click on the highest bracketed Page no. at the top, it will take you to the most recent posts.

Really? "The price of democracy and the price of sovereignty is high. People have died for this. The economics of this sometimes isn't as important as the principle of it" is not suggesting we will pay a price?

That link is scary, DMcG. When even the brexit part are saying leaving will hurt the UK economy for 30 years we begin to see why no one on here has come up with any good news yet. Assuming you mean the Lucy Harris link. To paraphrase she says Brexit at any cost, and answering points being made by several persons:Campbell then asked Harris to try and elaborate on her comment and it wouldn't exactly fill your heart with hope and prosperity, even if you were the most staunch of Brexiteers. Well...I don't...I mean...are you looking for a number...or?I think short term there will be an effect on the economy. Short-term yes. Campbell: How long is short term? Harris?How long is short term? I don't know. The next 30 years? I think short term there will be some effects on it. A flabbergasted Campbell seemed shocked that she would predict such an extensive length of time, who quickly figured out that things wouldn't start to get better until three years before his 90th birthday. Harris replied again:The price of democracy and the price of sovereignty is high. People have died for this. The economics of this sometimes isn't as important as the principle of it.

Assuming she was giving her honest answers to the points being put, there is a distinct lack of any comment that there would be 30 years of negative effects. Clearly we have taken over 40 years becoming entangled with EU. Getting clear of that influence will also take time.

The transcript certainly reads as if the presenter is not being impartial, but siding with the two pro-EU activists Femi Oluwole and Madeleina Kay against the single pro-Brexit spokesman.

The Independent does make one comment (before the transcript starts) which appears even handed:During an appearance on BBC Radio 5 Live, Lucy Harris a member of the Brexit Party who is running in the European Elections in Yorkshire and Humber claimed that we might not see any benefits for another 30 years.

That is quite different from predicting 30 years of doom & gloom, but clearly a paragraph (encapsulating what the quotes actually say) which will be ignored by Remainers.

That might come across as more aggressive than I intended. Let's try again. I presume you are at least willing to accept no deal. Certainly many Brexit supporters are. But there are even varieties of no-deal. For example, a large number of fridges, we are told, have been bought to stockpile medicines to prevent a shortage in the event of no-deal. Grayling, for all his incompetence, appears to have tried to arrange alternative transportation for goods in the event of no deal.

So you can have a no deal, while simultaneously trying to identify risks in it and then taking steps to minimise those risks.

At the other extreme, is no-deal with no attempt to mitigate any effects at all. And in between are thousands of variations depending on what you see as risks and how great you assess them to be.

While my personal opinion is of course that remain would be better, I do not regard anyone who wants no deal and is prepared to assess the risks and then act to mitigate them as stupid. And fully own the consequences of Brexit, good or bad.

The Brexit party have concentrated on Brexit. They are focused, unlike Labour with their ridiculous campaign poster in Peterborough emphasizing law and order in a campaign caused by the dismissal of a criminal labour Mp. (To steal a phrase: You could not make it up!) When the two "has-been" parties are forced into an election, then is the time for a slick party manifesto. Unlike the career politician amateurs in the other parties Brexit will have candidates with real world experience, honed in the cut and thrust of business, bringing a level of professionalism their opponents can only drool over.

That link is scary, DMcG. When even the brexit part are saying leaving will hurt the UK economy for 30 years we begin to see why no one on here has come up with any good news yet.

Still, I suppose when we get are cuntry back we will have unlimited wealth, good weather all year round and unicorns in every garden. It will all be worthwhile. Shame no one on here will be about to see it.

Having just checked The Electoral Calculus prediction for Peterborough, they put Labour with the highest chance, then Tory, with LibDem and Brexit party in the doldrums. I think that is wrong - Farage will certainly be doing his damnedest to get the Brexit party as high as possible, and the more he succeeds in that, the stronger the anti-Brexit response will be, which will primarily help the LibDems. And neither Labour nor Conservatives are being too convincing at the moment.

That 22% of the population is prepared to vote for a party which gives no information on what it would try to do in power apart from leaving the EU, which some of their party say might take 30 years to recover from ( Lucy Harris, Brexit party) is hardly 'spiffing'.

Deliberately play down Brexit by classing them as other yet they come number 2.

The pundits claimed brexit would fade after the EU elections. I think not!

and for some icing on the cake: Tory second referendum campaigner Phillip Lee is facing the music at a Special General Meeting of Bracknell Conservative Association this Saturday morning, they will vote on a no confidence motion in him.

He may be as slippery as cat sh*t on linoleum, but I doubt he will slither out of this little contretemps

If you say that we give the EU £350 million a week without saying that we get much of that straight back, and you know it, in order to make your case that we give the EU a lot of money, you are being deliberately misleading and you are lying by omission. I honestly can't see why that isn't crystal clear.

I am happy for the court to examine the matter. We have, in my opinion, covered all the relevant points about the bus many times so I don't see this advancing until we can react to whatever the court gives its view.

Yes, the previous post was from me. I'll state it again just in case it gets deleted as a 'Guest' post in BS: I was signed in when I started typing. [It got deleted. Thanks for re-posting it. -Mod]

As I pointed out back in 2017, when this matter was last raised, the figure of £350m was an official figure (Although a gross rather than net figure) provided by the UK Statistics Authority. They wrote to Boris, complaining that he was misusing official figures. The wording makes clear that it was an official figure.In his letter, Sir David once again repeated the explanation that the £350m statistic relates only to what the UK currently pays to the EU, and does not include the money that Britain receives in return. (the above)From: The Independent The side of the "Boris Bus" said "We send the EU £350 million a week" Apart from the comment differentiating between net & gross, David Norgrove's comment is the same as the bus.

Let me illustrate that with an example which does not involve Brexit. Two salesmen go along to a company and try to sell them a product. The potential purchaser is reluctant: he is not at all confident he can get the funds, or that it will really that beneficial to his company, and anyway they have found something maybe as good but a little cheaper from elsewhere.

Each salesman reports back. The former says they seemed quite reluctant and not at all promising and estimates 10% chance of getting the sale. The second salesman reports back that they were wildly enthusiastic, and were begging to get the product ASAP. He estimates 90% or better chance of the sale coming off.

Surely it is obvious the first is speaking in good faith and the second is lying? And that that is what is taking place, irrespective of whether the company does buy the product or not in the end?

I'm no defender of boris, but the difference saying something misleading and unrealistic and outright lying seems a bit academic

Not at all. It is all about whether statements and predictions were made in good faith and believed at the time they were made, or were made knowing full well they were not. Whether a prediction turned out to be accurate in the end is different from whether it was made in good faith at the time.

Why to you think that those predictions were unrealistic Steve? We don't know yet, if we ever will. I would suggest that George Osborne's predictions of the hit that the average family would/will take might have been a touch short of reality.

The remain campaign undoubtedly made misleading and unrealistic PREDICTIONS about the post-Brexit world. Political campaigning is predicated on predictions and it's up to an educated electorate (or should be) to distinguish between realistic projections and far-fetched extrapolations based on ideological bullshit. That's the name of the game and 'twas ever thus. What Johnson did was to tell a deliberate lie, which he painted on the side of a bus. It was a lie and he knew it was a lie. That was no prediction. It was a stated false fact, writ large. Defenders of Boris appear not to be able to tell the difference.

There is a difference between a promise which is not kept, and a downright lie on matters of fact. Boris is bang to rights. The maximum sentence for misconduct in public office is life imprisonment. And may I recommend Walton Gaol, Liverpool. And when he goes in, every single prisoner should be given a copy of this article. Pick up the soap, Boris.

Should the politically motivated court case against BORIS have merit, I have no doubt absolute clarity will be given to both interpretations. The Crown Prosecution Service could throw it out right now. I suspect had a remainer been accused the result would be no case to answer and produced faster than you could say timmy robinson. It is a dangerous path when the judiciary show political leanings, as it is when the speaker is no longer impartial, as it is when a convicted criminal is given a ridiculously abbreviated sentence and thereby allowed a casting vote on crucial legislation. The EU, I notice, has no qualms in banning the duly elected Catalan MEP from taking his seat.

I am afraid, Iains, you are just demonstrating that you and whoever made that video do not understand the difference between being incorrect and lying. But relax: I am not about to repeat the monologue my wife had to sit through.

You realise that all MPs that signed up for article 50 and stood for election on a leave ticket would be open for challenge, as would May's inveterate lies about brexit, not to mention dodgy dossiers and possible war criminal charges. We could of course add all the remainer false claims about instant interest rate rises, the economy tanking etc stc. All deliberate misrepresentations. Could be some rather nasty unintended consequences from such actions. Be careful what you wish for!

From your perspective it could be argued brexit has occurred by default because of endless lies enabling postponement.

My wife was subjected to a tedious lecture by me yesterday on the differences between truth value, lying and rhetoric. The third is the natural ground of politicians and is about persuasion, rather than about whether things are true or not, or whether they are misrepresentations of the truth intended to deceive. She is long-suffering, I am afraid.

I think making politicians challengeable on whether they are deliberately misrepresenting something in order to deceive is no bad thing and falls a long short of destroying democracy. Without is we are really in the world of 'who shouts louder', which is a far greater threat to democracy in my view.

An interesting bit on the chappie crowdfunding the court case accusing Boris of lying:

The man behind the case to prosecute Boris Johnson has been saying his case is not about stopping Brexit, just about stopping 'lying in politics'. That will come as news to the original backers of Marcus J. Ball's first (now deleted) crowdfunder which was set up from "within a Facebook group called The 48%" in order to reverse the result of the referendum.

"Once these prosecutions have established that politicians did indeed lie to voters our next step will be to take other action to prevent Brexit. This may be in the form of a judicial review… We will also work to reverse Brexit and ensure our membership of the European Union is not lost"

Ball deleted his original blogs, seemingly to hide his original intentions and then launched a new site claiming that he was "motivated by a desire to challenge the national problem of lying in UK politics." In late 2018 a new 'Brexit Justice Prosecution' page was launched, a new financial target established, and new Twitter and Facebook profiles were set up as old ones are deleted. The old 'Brexit Justice' Page now reroutes to the new page, with all references to Ball's political views removed. (what a sneaky fellow he is!)

What started as an attempt to prosecute the Leave campaign turned into a campaign against the man who led it, which if successful would have hugely destructive consequences over our democracy, enforcing government regulation of political speech.

The idea of a parallel currency that Italy is raising is remarkably similar in some ways to Brexit. Yes, you can run a campaign to convince people it is a good idea, and they can vote for it and perhaps win it. Or, as a government you can introduce it with the persuasion but without having a vote (at a somewhat greater risk to your personal future if it all goes bad.) But if you do introduce it, you get the whole package. You don't get to choose the bits you like and reject the bits you don't.

I visited Madagascar a few years ago and it uses a curreny called the 'ariary'. At the moment, 1 arity = 0.00022 pounds sterling. When I left, I came home with around £25 worth of currency. It is a wad of notes about 3cm thick. It is a perfectly useful currency for internal trading - paying for a hotel room, for example - but try to buy any foreign goods - a can of coke, rather than the local version for example - and it has very little value at all. Try and buy arity before you go to the country and it is unheard of - the banks don't even recognise it. (While India won't allow the banks to buy and sell their currency, at least the banks know it exists.)

So Italy can introduce a parallel currency if it likes, and hope to get some advantages out of it. But, whether they like it or not they would also get any disadvantages that come with it. And primarily they would probably turn out to be huge difficulties of trading with other countries, in or out of the EU, because it is those countries that decide on the value to attach to the parallel currency. And it could turn out to be virtually none.

Don't worry about Boris. The establishment will look after him. The big guns are already out. As for Portillo, well his railway programmes are very nice. But his true colours all too frequently show through on the Thursday night Andrew Neil programme. Deep down, he's a dyed-in-the-wool unreconstructed right-wing Tory. A leopard who can't change his spots. A wolf in sheep's clothing. The iron behind the velvet. Choose your own metaphor. Know thine enemy. Thine enemy is any Tory, and he's one of the unthinking worst.

its all a bit reminiscent of when everyone was predicting the SDP was going to be the biggest party in parliament. Thatcher was a bastard and Foot/Kinnock unelectable. So people were going to vote SDP.

Then there was the Falklands and . And everyone went back to voting Tory/Labour.

it was personality led that time too. And to be honest ... i didn't like the personalities then either.

Kind of hard to ridicule the Equality and Human Rights Commission announcing the launch of a full statutory investigation into the Labour party.

and while Labour is expelling people for breaking rules:Fresh from yesterday’s conveniently timed explusion of Alastair Campbell from the Labour Party, today it emerged that famously loyal Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn was a star speaker at a 1998 rally for the Communist Party of Britain. Corbyn’s name literally appears on the Communist Party recruitment form, the rally will have helped to drum up cash for the party’s coffers, breaking a swathe of Labour Party rules.

I wondered how long it would take for Labour antisemitism to rear its head. You would have thought the media barons, Tory dirty tricks brigade and spin doctors would have realised that you can only flog a dead horse so far.